'... the huge python puffed himself out, hissing with the noise of a sword drawn from a steel scabbard.
'I have seen all the dead seasons...and the great trees and the old elephants, and the rocks that were bare and sharp-pointed ere the moss grew. Art thou still alive, Manling?...'

This is from "Red Dog" in The Second Jungle Book

The Seonee wolf pack are threatened by a great troop of dholes, red dogs from the Dekkan, who have slaughtered a wolf family, and are invading their territory. Mowgli has asked Kaa, the ancient rock python, one of the oldest creatures in the Jungle, to help find a way of defeating them. Kaa has been thinking back over all he has seen and known since the day he came from the egg.